An archive of news items related to child abuse or neglect, or infringement of children's rights, in a religious context.
Copyrighted materials appearing on this blog are provided under Fair Use provisions to facilitate education and further research into the issues documented in these news reports.

14 Dec 2010

New York Boy Scout leader charged with predatory sexual assault of two young boys

WKBW News - Lockport, NY July 20, 2010

Scout Leader in Court for Alleged Child Abuse

It was all over in a matter of minutes. Michael Walleshauser, the former scout leader accused of child abuse, appeared in Lockport Town Court with his attorney Tuesday night. During his appearance, Walleshauser waived his right to a preliminary hearing in local court, meaning that the case will now move to Niagara County Court.

The fifty year old Lockport resident is being charged with predatory sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual acts, and attempted sexual abuse. He allegedly sexually assaulted two young boys under the age of thirteen. The Niagara County Sheriff says though he was a scout leader, the case is not a boy scout matter, as the victims were not scouts, nor were they associated with the scout troop.

Gary Freedman, Walleshauser's attorney, said after the proceeding that "under our law he is innocent until proven guilty. He's looking forward to his day in court, and that's all I have to say right now."

Niagara County Assistant District Attorney Robert Zucco was also present. "The case will now be dealt in superior court, Niagara County Court. The next step is really the review of the case by the grand jury," he said.

The Niagara County Sheriff said that there have been no additional complaints or alleged victims outside of the original two boys. The Niagara County Assistant DA did recognize the possibility that the children might be called to testify against Walleshauser if the case goes to trial, and said that it would be difficult, but they would be prepared if it happened.

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Religious Child Abuse

Marge Simpson: "I know God would never ask a mother to give up her child for the world...again."

Judith Herman describes the way in which perpetrators seek to control the disclosures and discourses of abuse:

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no-one listens... After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.”

About This Blog

This blog is an archive of news articles on religion related child abuse. The dates in the Blog Archive list below are the dates these articles were posted to this archive, not the original date of the article. Each post in this blog includes at the top of the entry the name of the originating publication or website, the original date of publication, the name of the reporter or author of the article if one was provided, and at the bottom of each entry a link to the original source.

About post titles: The original headlines for the articles in this archive appear after the name of the original publisher and date. Those titles often do not contain enough identifying information as they are often written for local audiences and limited by space constraints. I initially just used the original article headline as my title for the post entry. However, after about a year I realized those headlines are inadequate. I began to create my own titles for each entry, which serves two purposes. My own titles, which appear at the top of the entry in red font, contain more specific information from the article, making it easier to categorize and search for. Many of my own titles also contain an editorial slant that serves as my own brief commentary on the subject matter.

Following this blog: Although I have stopped adding articles to this archive, as I explain on the home page, I do continue to publish comments submitted to existing articles. I also use the comments section to update articles. For example, where a court case related to an archived article is ongoing, I will publish news updates in the comment section of the related article. For this reason do not subscribe to Posts but subscribe to the Comments for any new updates in this archive . I also post all updates to this blog through my TWITTER account.